


drive all night to get back home

by blueofthebay (alemara)



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 14:54:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2472308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alemara/pseuds/blueofthebay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mattie's three months old, and Danny hates him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drive all night to get back home

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Hawaii Five-0 Episode 5.04

Mattie's three months old, and Danny _hates_ him. He won't stop crying, and Ma's _always_ busy with him. She gets up in the middle of the night to feed him and rock him and talk to him softly, and Danny can't sleep with the dim light from the nursery pouring into the hall by his bedroom. She spends an hour trying to coax him to eat, and barely looks at the picture Danny drew her of the big rollercoaster at Wildwood. Mattie is red-faced and funny-looking and he smells weird like baby formula and Danny liked it better before, when he wasn't there at all. __

He tries to sell Mattie to the girl who lives next door. She's six and tempted by the deal, but can't pony up more than thirty cents, and any way Pop comes home early and she rats him out. Danny gets a stern talking to and Disappointed Eyes from Ma, and he stands in the nursery for a long time after dinner, watching the baby sleep and thinking maybe thirty cents was the best deal he was gonna get.

~

Mattie's four years old, and he scraped his knee.

Except he didn't scrape his knee. He fell down and hit the blacktop, because the bigger boys pushed him, and Danny's not sure if the red he's seeing is pure fury or if its the blood on Matt's knee, the blood on his own knuckles, the blood shining bright and surprised at the corner of Nicky Lareau's mouth.

The babysitter rats on him to Pop, and Danny gets a pretty good telling off, but he thinks Pop looks kind of proud as he sends Danny to his room, and late that night Matt sneaks open the door and spills dim hallway light on the floor to bring Danny cold plain pizza for dinner. His knee is stiff and Danny's knuckles are stiff, but they get Spider-man band-aids and flex their muscles at each other, trash-talking until the sting is gone.

~

Mattie's eight years old, and Danny is sick of trying to teach him how to lace up his skates right.

The problem is that Matt doesn't like them to be uncomfortable, so he laces them too loose, and then he can't skate right. Danny tugs them tight, and Matt complains that it hurts, but Danny just cuffs his knee and tells him to suck it up.

Matt's not great at hockey. He doesn't take hits well, tends to fold in on himself when someone comes after him, but he's great with the puck and Danny positions himself as a rearguard, bodily checking the opposing team right into the wall every time they come after Matt, and, together, they tend to win more than they lose. Matt keeps betting on the games, though, and Danny doesn't like it: you don't bet on yourself, he thinks, but Matt disagrees.

"I'm not betting on me," he says, "I'm betting on you."

~

Danny's sixteen years old, and he's in love. Mattie's twelve, and he's a _brat_. He sneaks into the car when Danny's busy trying not to look too short in a cheap rented tux for the Christmas semi-formal and puts rotten eggs in the glove compartment. Not even the corsage Danny bought can get the smell out of the old leather and upholstery. Sarah, the girl from down the street, lets Nicky Lareau drive her home instead. Danny comes home and tackles Matt to the floor.

That night, Danny almost breaks Matt's arm, and he'd say it was accidental, but he doesn't think it was. Still, when Matt yells and hits his shoulder, Danny lets go. The tux didn't fit right, anyway.

~

Danny's in the Academy, and Matt's in trouble.

He got mixed up with the wrong kind of guys near the Galleria -- Danny thinks it might have something to do with a girl -- and he's a nervous wreck, looking over his shoulder and sleeping like shit, so Danny goes down with a couple of Academy buddies to hash things out. They trade their beef with Matt for a blind eye to some petty territory squabbles, and it all works out okay. Danny's glad it doesn't end in a fight, but letting even a few petty crimes slide doesn't sit well with him.

But then Matt shows up with celebratory beers and Danny's favorite pie, and he thinks it probably wasn't so high a price, anyway.

~

Danny's twenty-four, and he's in love. Mattie is twenty, and the best man. Danny still doesn't think the tux fits right, but Matt says he'll take care of it, and, to Danny's surprise, he does.

Except Danny doesn't know where the tuxedos come from, because they're nicer than the ones he could afford, and Matt spends a whole night buying drinks for the whole bachelor party, and Danny didn't think Matt had that kind of money, but this is a party, and he's not thinking too clearly about anything, is too terrified about what he's stepping into to worry about it.

Matt makes a great toast. He tells everyone how Danny tried to sell him for thirty cents to the girl next door, and the whole room laughs. Then he tells everyone how Danny took the fall for him when he'd let a family of white mice into the principal's office, and that Danny had detention for a sold month and never ratted him out.

He tells Rachel she's lucky. He tells her Danny is the kind of guy who'll take care of her no matter what, because he's already spent his life taking care of Matt. He tells her she's already the winner here, because she bet on the right guy. It's moving. It's funny. Danny has tears in his eyes and he pretends they're from laughter when he hugs his brother and wrestles the microphone away from him, and then Matt bribes the DJ to play "Wanted Dead or Alive" and the party _really_ starts.

~

Danny's thirty-two, and he's getting divorced, except he doesn't have the money to get divorced.

"I'll loan you the money," Matt tells him, the first week in the motel, when Danny hasn't shaved in fifteen days and spent each one of the last seven doing nothing but drinking and watching golf tournaments on TV.

"You don't have that kind of money," Danny points out, because no one has that kind of money except Stan, which is just another reason to hate Stan.

"I'm doing okay," Matt tells him. "Let me help."

"You can't help," Danny says, but he means  _you're not supposed to help_ , because Danny's the one who helps Matt, not the other way around. He's the big brother, he's the one who runs interference, fights the battles, fixes the problem. But Matt's there every night and he brings beer and plain pizza and he talks about everything but Rachel until Danny finds himself asking questions again, until the fog of depression begins to lift and he meets the person who looks a lot like he used to again.

Matt sits on the shitty motel couch and hauls Danny up out of his spiral, and Danny can't pay him back, couldn't even if he were a millionaire, too.

~

Danny's thirty-five and living in Hawaii, and Matt's the first family aside from Grace he's seen in over a year, but it hasn't been so long that Danny doesn't know something's up, even if Matt's charm is undiminished, even if he's more extravagant than ever.

"Whatever it is, we'll fix it," Danny tells him, but Matt says _not this time_ and Danny doesn't get it, until he races the Feds to find the answers and realizes he can't trade a few favors or take a fall to get Matt off the hook. No one has that kind of money, not even Stan, and then Matt's gone, and Matt isn't there to haul him back up off of this couch and the case of beer he spends a weekend working through.

 

Danny's been a cop for years, but he can't pull this trigger.

~

Danny's thirty-six, and Matt is still on the run.

Nothing's come but that one postcard, that Danny tried to rip up and throw away but couldn't, but he still thinks about it. That night. The plane and the fence. The gun in his hand. The strings he could pull. The ones he can't.

He hopes Matt's safe. He hopes nobody's sold him out. He hopes there isn't a price high enough.

~

Danny's thirty-eight, and he takes the money, because there isn't any amount of money he wouldn't pay for Mattie. Thirty cents. Eighteen and a half million dollars.

He knows it's not right, and it coils hard and cold in his stomach, but it'll mean he can drag Matt back home. He'll yell, and Matt will fold into himself, but it'll be all right.

It'll be all right.

He takes the money, and doesn't think about what it'll mean.

~

Danny's thirty-eight, and Matt will never be older than thirty-four.

It's too much money. (It's not enough money.)

He hates Mattie. (He throws himself against the wall again and again.)

There's a red haze in his vision. There are tears burning a dry hole in his chest. There's a betting ticket in the form of a postcard in his bag that should be torn into confetti.

There's blood on his knuckles. There's blood on the mouth of the man whose gun he took.

There's an unfixable problem he should have fixed. There's the brother he should have done anything to save.

(Mattie's three months old and crying twenty years old dancing at Danny's wedding thirty years old and making a name for himself, making their old man proud)

He needs a button to rewind time.

(Danny's sixteen and he hates Mattie he's four and he hates Mattie he's thirty two and just wants Matt to go _away_ because some things just stay broken, he's thirty-eight in a cellar in Columbia and he _hates Matt_ , how could he be so stupid, how could he do this, how could he give Danny's anger the slip by being dead, how  _could he_ )

He needs Matt to come out from the dark corner and laugh at him. It was a prank. White mice in the principal's office.

_Gotcha, Danny_.

But Mattie isn't anywhere at all. Danny wishes he hadn't allowed himself the sick moment of hope, hadn't let himself call Matt's name like he actually expected him to walk around the corner.

(Danny's eighteen and Matt's making him laugh so hard he feels sick Matt's three months old and and won't stop crying Danny's a full-grown man and he wants to laugh and he feels sick, Matt's thirty-four forever and Ma won't stop crying) 

Danny's thirty-eight and he's shaking, but the gun holds still. He's thirty-eight, and Marco Reyes won't be living for another single second. He's thirty-eight, and there are so many years he's desperate to have back. He's thirty-eight and he misses his brother so much it's hollowed him out inside, clawed out his chest and lungs and guts and left him with one long silent wail in his head and murder in his heart.

(There's a silent barrel instead of his brother and every brick that builds around Danny has  _nothing you can do_ written on it)

Danny's thirty-eight, and he can't make this better. He's not the one who took this bullet. He wasn't there. He failed. He tries and fails to understand how something so mundane and motionless could contain the circus show of Mattie Williams, who could make a whole room laugh, who hated pain. He tries and can't conceive of a Matt so hurt a band-aid or a beer can't fix it. He tries and fails to picture a world in which Mattie isn't there at all. He thinks maybe Reyes was lying. He knows he wasn't.

Danny's thirty-eight, and he couldn't save his brother.

Danny will get older than thirty-eight, but Matt won't.

Danny's thirty-eight, and he can't unpull this trigger.


End file.
